In this episode, Daniel talks about why Roof Life believes in doing the right thing. Think of it like karma; the good you do comes back to you- in life and in business.

Podcast Transcription: RoofLifeB023-178

Shayla: Welcome to the Roof Life of Oregon podcast. I’m talking with Daniel today. Daniel, why does Roof Life of Oregon always give the homeowner accurate information, regardless if it benefits Roof Life of Oregon or not?

Daniel: We believe that if we give the accurate information, we’re honest with clients, it’s going to come back to us. If you lie or mislead a client, that’s going to come back to you also. So when we look at a roof, we’re going to tell you what’s going to make the roof move forward, versus backward. If we tell you leave it alone, leave it alone. If you’ve got some years left on it if you leave it alone, do that. If we say, hey, we can do this to move you forward, that’s the right thing. It all comes back to you, doing the right thing.
Case and point. Had a client two or three years ago, he had a leak. He called the office, said, “Hey, I’ve got a leak. I need to get it figured out.” The office dispatched me out and go out and look at this roof and it’s a really simple thing. It’s not even worth sending a crew out to fix. He’s got a furnace pipe that comes up and there’s a piece called a storm collar and the simplest little thing, just didn’t have caulking around it. When they originally built the house, they just didn’t do it, and over the years, expansion and contraction, it moved around.

Went down to my van, grabbed some caulking, put it around the edge, and said, let’s see if that works. If that works, we’re good. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to go in the attic and try to figure out if there’s anything else. So I added the caulking, worked fine. It didn’t need anything else done. now le’ts fast forward two to three years to now. He calls up the office, he trusts us, and says, “Hey, I’ve got another leak.” I called him back and said, “Hey, is this leak in the same place?” He says, “No, no. That one’s fine. What you did was great. It’s in a different place on the left side. Can you come take a look?” I said, “Absolutely.”

Drive out, go look at the house, and we’ve had this crazy winter where we’ve had wind, and rain and driving rain, just not normal Portland weather and the water and the wind literally lifted some ridge caps on a hip that runs down and it lifted them up and they’re all getting loose, so he was literally in the driveway while I’m looking at this and I said, “All these ridge caps are lifting up, the water’s basically going inside, I can see the gap on the inside, so what we need to do is clean that up, get it waterproof, put new ridge caps on there and a new can vent, that’s going to move you forward.” While I was there, we talked about moss. Hey, what can we do for the roof? I’ve got this moss over here. Let’s get it moving. I love you guys. Let’s do that. Let me inspect the rest of the roof. Let’s see how much it’s changed in the last few years.

Beautiful presidential roof. The roof is going to go another five to seven years. Typically you would think longer, but this particular one had some issues. I climbed up and it’s got big chunks of granules missing and just lots of areas where granules are just coming off the roof. When that happens, it can’t be cleaned. You’ve got to leave it alone. Let’s not make it go backward and take more granules off. So I said let’s leave it alone. It’s a nice thick shingle. You’re going to get five, maybe seven years, but don’t put any money into moss. Let’s just get the repair done and that’s it. We talked about it, I sent the information, sent the bid off to him. The next day, I got a really nice email back from him. He said, “Hey, I remember you from two to three years ago taking care of my roof, getting this fixed. Now, you come back out, you look at this leak, you tell me what’s going on with it. Let’s go ahead and get that scheduled and I really appreciate you telling me, don’t touch your roof, don’t put any money into it. Let’s get the next few years out of it. When it’s time to replace this roof, you’re the only ones we’re going to call.” You can see where it comes back to you. If you’re honest with the client, it’s going to come back to you. Misleading a client, it just doesn’t work.

Shayla: Are there companies out there, we’ve touched on it a little bit, but tell us about a company that may actually have cleaned off that moss.

Daniel: Well, we just had a blog that we talked about before where there are roofing companies right down the street from us that will go out and they’ll say, yep, let’s go ahead and clean it. Let’s go ahead and get all that extra moss off, along with all the other granules and then instead of five to seven years, that client’s going to get one to two years and then he’s going to have to start replacing it. So it just doesn’t work. Tell the client what’s going to move the roof forward. Don’t tell them what they want hear to make it look pretty or spend a quick buck. It’s not the right thing to do.

Shayla: Did you guys get him fixed up on his repair on the other side?

Daniel: He’s in the schedule now. He’s not ready to go yet. Luckily, we haven’t had too much rain, so he’s in the queue to get it replaced. So he’s probably going to get done this week.

Shayla: So if you do have an issue on your roof, make sure you reach out to the team at Roof Life of Oregon. You can rest assured that you’ll get accurate information that will move your forward. If you have any questions, reach out to the team today. Thanks, Daniel.